e-Literate

Present is Prologue

Tag: eBooks

  • Making College Textbooks More Affordable: Part II

    This is a guest post blog by Jim Farmer, Coordinator, Scholarly Systems Group at Georgetown University and editor at the eReSS project, University of Hull.

    On Friday, June 1st, the Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance released their report “Turn the Page: Making College Textbooks More Affordable.” Responding to a Congressional concern about high and rapidly increasing cost of “textbooks,” The Committee was asked “to conduct a one-year study of the cost of college textbooks and to make recommendations on increasing the affordability of textbooks.”

    The report relied heavily on two commissioned papers. Dr. James V. Koch authored “An Economic Analysis of Textbook Pricing and Textbooks Markets” distributed in September 2006. He made some suggestions how the “markets” for textbooks could be improved to provide lower prices. (He did not use the term “textbooks and other learning materials” later used in the Advisory Committee’s report).

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  • eBooks on the iPod Getting Closer?

    A while back, I predicted that the logical conclusion of the whole iTunes U thing would be eBooks on an iPod. It would, I think, dramatically impact the textbook market (for the better) and open up all kinds of opportunities for alternative content (including free/libre content). Well, Engadget claims that the day is nearing:

    We tend to field a lot of inside information here at Engadget HQ, but we’ve gotten not one, but two bits from separate, trustworthy insiders that Apple’s not satisfied merely vending Audible’s books-on-digital-audio solution. With the iRex iLiad and Sony PRS-500 Portable Reader both right around the corner, is it possible the next iPod might catch the eBook bug? We’d say the possibility is very real, since according to a source at a major publishing house, they were just ordered to archive all their manuscripts — every single one — and send them over to Apple’s Cupertino HQ. A separate trusted source let us know that the next iPod will have a substantial amount of screen real estate (as we’d all suspected), as well as a book reading mode that pumps up the contrast and drops into monochrome for easy reading. It’s no e-ink, sure, but a widescreen iPod would be well suited for the purpose, and according to our source, the books you’d buy (presumably through iTunes) won’t have an expiration — kind of like Apple-bought music, as well, but contradictory to the movie rental scheme we’ve heard rumored.

    If Apple does this, it will bring eBooks (finally!) into the mainstream very quickly. And just as importantly, it creates an instant commodity distribution mechanism via iTMS/iTunes U.

    I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

  • Why iTunes University is a Game Changer

    This is part 5 of a series of posts documenting a vist to Apple headquarters in February, 2005. For the full series, see part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, and part 6.

    In my last post, I made the case that we should feel reasonably safe taking Apple at their word when they say that they want to keep iTunes U free and free from lock-in for the long-term. As far as I can tell, it’s not evil. In this post, I’m going to argue that it is, in fact, a force for good-good for the evolution of learning environments, good for the textbook market, and good for expanding the horizons of digitally-enhanced teaching and learning interactions. (more…)